The Case for New Orleans

Those of you who read my blog know that I was in New Orleans last week checking out my family's new home down there. It was truly heartwarming to see the Crescent City still pretty much unaffected by BP's criminal oversights in the Gulf, and to see residents banding together in unified hatred:

T-shirt Captions, clockwise from top: "FUBP", "Plug the Oil Leak with BP Execs!", "I Want my Life Back" (under a sad, oil-covered pelican)

I still believe what BP did is criminal, and I'm glad people like Susan Spicer are standing up for themselves. This situation is really a case of big business against the regular joe. Think of it this way: had I personally gone to the Deepwater Horizon drill and made an irreparable hole in the piping, I would be the most hated man in America. I would have been sentenced to a lifetime in prison, maybe even extradited to Texas so they could gas me. However, since it was a corporation, blame is tossed around like a hot potato and no one suffers but the victims of BP's criminal negligence. Yes, some (like me) will boycott BP, but mark my words: they will survive to somehow profit from the worst coporation-caused Ecological disaster in our country's history.

"How could they possibly make money off of us now?" you may ask. Simple: the new safety legislation that will hopefully soon be put into place will mean a whole lot of expense in a very short amount of time. Guess who's going to be footing that bill? Tony Hayward? Nope, his yacht is wind-powered. Americans will pay the brunt of the oil companies' oversight in gas prices, which are only staying low right now to avoid any more trouble.

The worst part is that all of this was completely avoidable. Most every major conflict and human-based disaster is, but we simply don't learn. Time after time as a civilization we make the same mistakes, then wonder how we possibly end up in the same bad situations again.

1928: Laissez-Faire is the policy for our economy!
1929: Those damn commies ruined the economy!!!

2001: Laissez-Faire is still the policy for us!!!
2010: What did this hippie/nazi/commie Obama get us into!?!?

Are we really so short-cited?

Nostalgically Yours